This question asks how one would access Java APIs in Android from Adobe AIR. The asker answers his own question by telling people to buy a book, not even mentioning what function he ended up using to do it. He only states that it is possible to do so.

For posterity, since this question was deleted for some reason, here's Genia S.'s question.

I am curious how (or for that matter if it's possible) to do things
like make a call to Environment.getExternalStorageDirectory() or any
Android specific calls of this nature when building an Android app
through Flash.

Specifically I'm interested in replicating startActivityForResult()
and local storage, but in general I'm unable to find the documentation
for how to make these sorts of requests/calls using AS3.

Is it that these sorts of features are just left out? I notice that
Flash offers me the permission settings (that normally go in the
manifest), as checkboxes in the publish settings, so, I'm assuming
that these other Android specific features are there as well, I'm just
unable to find any docs that support them.

TIA

And his answer to his own question:

Lo and behold it's O'reilly to the rescue.

They are about to release a book on the topic and I managed to buy an
pre-release online version through Safari.

He continued not to so much as mention what methods he ended up using when I pressed him in the comments.

I got into a bit of an argument in the comments on that post, so I wanted to ask whether this kind of answer is actually acceptable.

With books particularly, there's the issue that not everyone everywhere in the world can affordably obtain any given one. International shipping particularly is extremely expensive and sometimes takes a very long time; my last import from Japan (a book by Satoshi Tajiri of Pokémon fame on the design of video games) cost double what I paid for the actual book in shipping ($20 for the book, $40 shipping, took nearly a month to arrive - paid $60 to get it to the United States).

I would argue that such answers that don't even say a word about what they actually did (e.g., the name of the ActionScript call they had to make to break out into the Android APIs) are not true answers to a question. They are similar to link-only-answers that rely on external services and not self-contained.

2 Answers
2

I would argue that such answers that don't even say a word about what they actually did are not true answers to a question. They are similar to link-only-answers that rely on external services and not self-contained.

This is correct. To be more precise, there is no rule against "link only answers". Rather, for an answer to be an answer, the answer needs to contain the answer to the question. Information on where to find the answer is not an answer, whether the information on how to find the answer is a browser link, the title of a book, a street address to a poster with the answer, or a sign with an arrow pointing to where to find the apples1 answer.

excellent link. Also when I say 'link-only-answers' I mean answers that consist of a link and none of the actual information required to answer the question.
– Wyatt8740Nov 4 '16 at 19:36

@Wyatt8740 Yes, I'm aware that that's what you mean when you say a "link only answer". What I'm saying is that there isn't a rule that says, "you're not allowed to have link only answers", rather, there is a rule that said, "when you post an answer, it needs to actually answer the question, and providing information on where to find the answer is explicitly not an actual answer." As a result of that rule, a link only answer isn't actually an answer, but the actual rule itself is broader than that.
– ServyNov 4 '16 at 19:45

This is a prime example of how these sorts of answers can really hurt: that question and answer were posted in 2011, and no one ever posted a better answer. A question that's "answered" without an actual solution can discourage others from answering, hurting everyone who searches for the problem in the future.

I've deleted the answer and marked the question as a duplicate; for posterity, here's what the answer looked like:

Note that it was effectively useless in finding the duplicate; thus, it is entirely possible that the technique the author had in mind does not match the solution I found for the problems he identified in the question.

I would add a link to the post servy linked to - that's your question after all.
– Wyatt8740Nov 4 '16 at 19:52

1

Servy already got it, and I find his answer adequate; I added this one only to note that I'd deleted it and closed the question.
– Shog9♦Nov 4 '16 at 19:54

I am a little confused. I agree that the answer didn't really help anyone out, however, deleting such an answer kind of opens the door for other similar questionable answers - hence my confusion. Should the community be flagging these for deletion, and if so, with what metric? Not an answer doesn't seem to fit for the reasons explained in your mse post, yet it seems from your outlook here that this type of post is problematic.
– Travis JNov 4 '16 at 20:48

4

Read the question that answer was posted in response to, @Travis. Crucially, it wasn't "can someone recommend me a book about native access in Air?" - it asked specifically how to make native calls. And the answer made no attempt whatsoever to answer that, beyond noting that an answer could be found somewhere (where?!?) in a book. Related: meta.stackexchange.com/questions/98959/…
– Shog9♦Nov 4 '16 at 21:27